When You're Starting a Business, Everything is for the First Time
Running an agency for years makes the business fundamentals automatic. But starting fresh means every simple task spawns twelve prerequisites, creating a scramble of 700 tiny setup steps.
The business fundamentals come easy after running an agency for twelve years. Contracts, pricing, negotiations, scope definition, LLC setup, all the structural pieces of running a service business are second nature. You know the moves because you’ve been through this rodeo countless times. Within days, the core business infrastructure can be up and running because experience has made these complex tasks feel automatic. The real challenge is that starting fresh means building everything from zero. Every simple action triggers a cascade of prerequisites you forgot existed. You’re not just launching a business, you’re creating hundreds of tiny components simultaneously while trying to serve actual clients. It becomes a mad dash through endless setup tasks, working on client projects during the day and staying up late to build the infrastructure. The gradual client ramp up becomes essential, creating pockets of time to handle the foundational work that would otherwise never get done.